This kind of thing makes me very angry. If the husband has an STD they should be using condoms throughout their marriage to protect the wife from contracting the disease.
What! Why do you post your anger here on a Catholic board and claim to be agnostic???
I am agnostic because I don’t know whether God exists, and barring revelation I don’t think I will ever find out.What! Why do you post your anger here on a Catholic board and claim to be agnostic???
OH! But you are wrong! The Catholic Church is the Body of Christ & She has spoken on this. We can not pick and choose what we like or dislike. If the husband has STD, he should not be having intercourse with or without contraception for that matter, IMO. I would not take the risk.
But at the same time teachings should be reasonable, they should facilitate human happiness and quality of life.
Askeptic, I can not give you any better answer than what the apologist in the link on the first post gave. However, I will give you another link that does explain the Church’s teaching & how it goes back to the early Church fathers.See here…
Nope.
You have to read theology of the Body. I would highly recommend Christopher West’s books. Start with Theology of the Body for Beginners. It’s short and easy to read. Then you can try getting some of his other books where he gets into it more deeply. In any event, what you have to ultimately understand is that the fact that contraception contracepts is only a part of the reason that the Church teaches against them. If you read theology of the body, you will understand the rest.
Because every act of intercourse must be objectively unitive and procreative. It does not matter that subjectively it is not procreative, the act cannot be altered in any way before, during, or after. It is a disordered act if someone does so.
If the husband has an STD, he has not been following church teaching to begin with.
A person who has a disease such as this is called to chastity, not to more sin.
Atoning is always a good idea. Chastity is a virtue, and it strengthens the virtue of self-control (which clearly this husband lacks). Yes, abstinence is the answer. Not more sin.
The church teaches chastity before marriage and fidelity in marriage. There is no need for any “protection” when individuals embrace church teaching.
They should abstain. First, using a condom is a sin. Second, it is not 100% effective in stopping STDs. Therefore, the only 100% effective way to ensure the child is not harmed is abstinence.
So do the practice of the Virtues. Abstinence can be necessary, even permanently (for example, disability of one spouse). It’s a part of marriage, and an important one, but not more important that our health and our souls.
Catholicism’s teachings harm no one. It is disregarding those teachings that do so. The husband would have to have engaged in premarital or extramarital sex to have contracted the STD.
I thought Catholicism was about forgiveness and letting people start over as though they had never sinned.
I’ll concede this point, if there is a good chance that the child will be harmed they should abstain. But why not use condoms throughout their marriage if the STD is not that serious and they are willing to take the risk? They are already having sex, obviously they are willing to risk it, why not minimize their chances of infection?
I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect perfection from people. People aren’t perfect, people make mistakes, they should not spend their entire lives suffering because of mistakes they made.
I appreciate the insight, but I think that this is approach to human sexuality is way too “lawyerly”; overburdened with rules which in reality contradict each other. For instance, I don’t see why under these rules NFP would be allowed since you are carefully making sure that you are only having sex when you know you can’t concieve. This is a barrier of the mind, of knowledge, to conception as much as a condom is a physical barrier.
Well, you’ve brought this up. . .apparently without realizing that the one place in Africa where AIDS is NOT spreading is Uganda. . .which promotes abstinence instead of condoms.